Thursday 31 May 2007

Almost in Asia



I'm actually in Denmark, a wee village in the south west of western australia.
Its a cute little spot, and I've come here mostly for a days surfing, and it was an awesome experience. Not for the waves - though they wernt bad at all, but instead for the sight of a large humpback whale slapping his flippers and partial breaching the water about 50 meters from where I sat on my surfboard. I've seen a lot of spectacular animal scenery on this trip, but I think this has to top it. Especially as it wasnt part of the agenda (surfing) and there was no one about apart from a couple of surfer girls and me. Later I spotted a couple of baby whales just to top it off. Awesome.
The south west has been really cool - though mostly the weather has left a bit to be desired - cloudy and raining, but the last couple of days its been beautiful again.
After leaving Coral bay I headed north again on the wonderfully times 3:00 am greyhound to Exmouth, to dive on the muirion islands which was really good - including several pretty large white tipped reef sharks, huge schools of fish and the largest moray eel I've ever seen.

After all those buses it was a relief to fly down to perth, and I picked up a hire car and headed south to Bunbury, a teaming metropolis compared to what went before. It was weird getting used to traffic, towns and people again. After a couple of days hanging around with the locals, including UK standup Ross Nobel whos traveling round on the same BMW bike more famously used by Ewan McGregor on his big trip,


it was off to the cheese, chocolate and, most importantly, wine of Margaret River, where as well as quaffing the local excellent produce in copious amounts, I got to sample the delightful taste of a witchetty grub (made famous by class shows like survivour and I'm a Celebrity) - albeit in this case an already dead one.


I also passed glorious coastal scenery with lighthouses aplenty - though mostly shrouded in mist and rain, and some beautiful forrests, where I completed 3 fairly high adrenelin tree climbs - trust me, there a lot scarier than they look, as well as the pretty but fairly tame tree top walk.


Next stop is Albany to complete a dive on the HMAS Perth and then its back briefly to Perth to catch my flight to Singapore.
See you in not such a long time...

2 comments:

Triple D said...

Mr S and Ross Noble - such a lovely couple....

Unknown said...

mary says you dont have to go all the way to australia to see tree top walk, sure we have one of them in roscommon (first in country!!!!
silage cut today, weather crap. kildare comming for weekend.Nothing changes.............
Joey says eruuff